Sandisk officially launches 32GB solid state hard drive

[Brian]

Sandisk officially launches 32GB solid state hard drive (http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/11332/Sandisk+officially+launches+32GB+solid+state+hard+ drive/)

"Sandisk rightfully compares their 32GB drive with a typical notebook drive with 5400 rpm, even not touching the area of 4200rpm ones, which dominate the subnotebook space. Preliminary results show that burst rate of SSD drive is equal to sustained one, and that is 67MB/s. Classical hard drives may have the edge in burst speeds, but when it comes to sustained read or write speed, SSD should have no competition.

Sandisk also provided boot time difference - it takes 30sec to load Windows Vista Enterprise on a system with 32GB SSD drive, while identical notebook with classical 5400rpm drive will take 48sec, with much slower access time to files. Company execs stated that the company expects to see per-gigabyte price of SSD storage to come down and at the same time capacity should grow to typical sub-notebook sizes. One thing is certain – when 64GB SSD drive appears with a price of a 100GB drive, a quantum shift will happen. Not many people would choose not to sacrifice capacity over significantly increased battery life.
SanDisk is pricing the 32GB drive at around $350. Looks like the days of mechanical hard drives are coming to an end!"

Read full story here (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38203)

[handrail]

the video they had at CES of the impact testing and boot times for the SSHDs was sweet. it's about friggin time! i've been waiting for them to perfect these so digital video cameras will finally make sense.

[Brian]

The silence and low power usage is what interests me the most. It will help extend battery life, and you won't get that read/write noise that exists no matter how quiet a mechanical hard drive is.

Edit: Reduce, extend... same thing! :-P

[Max Slowik]

"However, in order for all of this to come true, we would expect that Sandisk provide a significant number of test units to independent testing organizations, so that we can see the performance measured in real world environments."

Subtle. Instead of asking for some from a rep, they just published their request.

[J2T]

The silence and low power usage is what interests me the most. It will help reduce battery life, and you won't get that read/write noise that exists no matter how quiet a mechanical hard drive is.

I'm sure hoping you meant "extend" batter life :-P

But I agree, the silence and power usage is definately what interests me about this.

[Brian]

Hahaha... yeah... whoops... I meant reduce power consumption / extend battery life :-P

[blackjet]

thats sweet, i knew the days of the mechanical HDD were numbered....lets just hope the price starts coming down!